Vehicle seats of today, such as seats for cars, trucks, aircraft, et cetera, are often furnished with one or more occupant restraint systems that most commonly include one or more seat belts. Generally, a front seat of a vehicle is provided with one seat belt system whereas a vehicle back seat, since it is typically a bench seat, may be provided with a plurality of seat belt systems, one for each seating position.
Occupant restraint systems also often comprise a safety belt tensioner (sometimes also referred to as a pre-tensioner) operative to tension the seat belt in preparation for a vehicle acceleration/deceleration (to include a collision) to thereby reduce the motion of an occupant of the seat equipped with the occupant restraint system. Moreover, the reversible tensioning of the safety belt may be used to haptically communicate to the occupant that the vehicle may be about to be involved in a collision.
In order to protect an occupant of a vehicle seat in an appropriate manner, the seat belt generally has to assume a suitable safety belt configuration prior to, or at least during the initial portion of, the possible deceleration. For instance for three-point or four-point belts, such a suitable safety belt configuration generally implies that a portion of the safety belt which extends diagonally downwards across the occupant's torso is located close to the neck of the occupant.
However, the above position of the diagonally extending portion of the safety belt (often referred to as the “shoulder-belt”) generally results in reduced comfort for the occupant. For example, the shoulder-belt portion of the safety belt may rub against the neck of the occupant. As such, it would be desirable to obtain a safety configuration and a comfort configuration of an occupant restraint system for a vehicle.